Complete text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by the Senate is now available online. You can download the PDF here.
Video of the presser:
$127 billion reduction in deficit. 94% coverage. Includes an opt-out public option compromise. I’m still unsure of this one. Seems like you could opt yourself right out of any cost savings by diluting the strength of the pool of insured.
One of the most contentions provisions of late has been the Stupak-Pitts Amendment in the house. A pretty good compromise is being offered on this one:
The Senate version would require at least one plan within the health insurance exchange that the bill sets up to offer a plan that covers abortion and one that doesn’t. It would also authorize the Health and Human Services Secretary to audit plans to make certain that abortion isn’t being paid for with federal dollars.
Which begs the question of why men – whether they are religiously banned from marriage or merely popularly elected officials – feel they have the obligation (much less the right) to decide for women what they should and should not do with their bodies.
Someday, I expect a damn good answer…
Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer.
I’ll agree with Modern who earlier said DMO doesn’t get read enough or enough credit as a great Ohio political blog. I’ve been a fan for a long time. You also have to read the link to Andrew Sullivan. Worth a click over to see the true face of the Catholic Church, if you didn’t already see it in the DC story.
This Stupak amendment is going to have to get changed greatly or jettisoned all together. 41 Dems have now signed on to voting against a bill that contains Stupak. Greg Sargent has the letter:
November 7, 2009
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
H-232 Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Madam Speaker:
As members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women’s access to reproductive health services.
The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health servicesto which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.
Sincerely,
This shit really works me up. Either there is a Constitutionally protected right of a woman to choose how to manage her own body with respect to pregnancies or there isn’t. This continual chipping away at this right has to stop. This is a big problem for Obama as I know he wants to have a landmark health care bill. Doing so while eroding the civil liberties of women is not going to work. Patting the little wingnuts and blue dogs on the head at some point is going to poison the thing.
Stupak is going to have to go, or Dems have to reconcile it. This is going to be challenging. Expect to hear much more on this in the coming days.
Update 2:54pm
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz is confident that the Stupak Amendment will most likely not be in the final health care bill:
